Crypto miners typically require the lowest-cost energy sources such as hydropower. Why then would Standard Power be interested in a Small Modular Reactor solution? It is way more expensive as the UAMPS fallout has demonstrated. This incongruity is already a red flag.
On 19 October 2023, we showed that NuScale’s key business contract with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (“UAMPS”) was at significant risk of termination. NuScale dismissed our report, labelling it as ‘riddled with speculative statements with no basis in fact’. Just a few days later, the company announced the termination of the UAMPS contract. Bloomberg characterised the cancellation as ‘abrupt’ but our report had already pointed out multiple signs that suggested its impending demise.
In its rebuttal, NuScale wrote that “…the CFPP being developed by Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems has its own project challenges not attributable to NuScale’s SMR technology”. The fact is UAMPS members abandoned ship because of escalating costs, which occurred even before any construction had begun. This structural problem is likely to repeat itself in future commercial relationships.
In its rebuttal, NuScale wrote that “…the CFPP being developed by Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems has its own project challenges not attributable to NuScale’s SMR technology”. The fact is UAMPS members abandoned ship because of escalating costs, which occurred even before any construction had begun. This structural problem is likely to repeat itself in future commercial relationships.
Once you are on a dead horse, you dismount quickly and move on to others,” said NuScale CEO John Hopkins when referring to the UAMPS contract on the 3Q23 earnings call. That poor horse was the cornerstone of NuScale’s business case and we are now left with the other major contract: Standard Power.
We reiterate that this contract is a pipe dream that was designed to divert attention from the loss of UAMPS. People familiar with project finance along with performance and credit risk (we are) would shake their heads. To recap, Standard Power is a small crypto dataserver company — with minimum internet footprint — to whom NuScale expects to deliver 24 units of 77 MWe modules, totalling 1,848 MWe in capacity. We estimated this contract was worth ~$37bn. NuScale questioned this number saying the company did not provide “any forecast for the expected value of the agreement with Standard Power…”. To get our number, we simply used the UAMPS price adjusted for the number of reactors. So it’s undoubtedly a massive contract.
Crypto miners typically require the lowest-cost energy sources such as hydropower. Why then would Standard Power be interested in a Small Modular Reactor solution? It is way more expensive as the UAMPS fallout has demonstrated. This incongruity is already a red flag. We also wonder: why did Standard Power not participate in the UAMPS project, since NuScale was actively seeking more subscriptions to reach the 80% target?
Still, Standard Power is touted by NuScale as a credible partner because its investors comprise “Ultra high net worth family offices and financial institutions” that have “access to capital in excess of $10bn”. Even if this is true (which we doubt because of Standard Power’s size and the lack of identification around its investors), who cares?
Have these financiers directly committed to the project? No.
Will these family offices invest all of their $10bn capital in a $37bn contract? This makes no sense.
Is it realistic to expect banks to finance crypto-related projects when the banking industry has cracked down on crypto financial flows? Good luck. It’s unlikely to even pass the compliance department.
During the 3Q23 conference call, TD Cowen analyst Marc Bianchi questioned Standard Power’s credibility as a counterparty. All he got from CFO Robert Ramsey Hamady was a smoke screen (see below on original)……………………………………………..
Management confidently states that NuScale has a “solid balance sheet” with $197m of cash at the end of September, and no debt. This perspective overlooks NuScale’s rapid cash burn of $153.9m over the last 12 months and ignores the impact of the UAMPS contract termination, which adds ~$63.3m in liabilities. On this basis, we estimate that NuScale has an 11-19 month cash runway depending on whether they draw on the ATM, which will dilute existing stockholders…………………………………….
As detailed in our first report, the DOE committed substantial funding towards the project, contingent on matching private money. However, the termination of the UAMPS contract implies any further support will be re-evaluated.
The company’s trajectory bears striking similarities to the B&W mPower project, a joint venture formed in 2010 between Babcock & Wilcox and Bechtel. Like NuScale, mPower was developing a small modular reactor and enjoyed DOE backing. Babcock & Wilcox, mPower’s 90%-shareholder, attempted but failed to sell a majority stake in the project. In a similar vein, NuScale’s largest shareholder Fluor is actively trying to sell around 30% of its equity interest in NuScale. There was eventually a significant reduction in funding for mPower. In March 2017, Bechtel withdrew from the joint venture, pointing to the challenges of securing a site and an investor for the first reactor. This led to the termination of the mPower project and Babcock & Wilcox paid Bechtel $30m as settlement.
NuScale is now staring at the likelihood of bankruptcy. It will not see any significant cash inflows with the UAMPS commercial setback. The company’s only way to stay alive, albeit for a short time, is to massively dilute its shareholders.
The selection of images is at the heart of the implacable demand from both sides for uncritical solidarity, for support for the right to self-defense and legitimation of the means used against the other. In this battle for public opinion, many stand with Israel and many others with the Palestinians.
The portrayal of the other side as demonic justifies the means used to fight it. The enemy is dehumanized, commonly likened to savage animals that have lost any shadow of humanity, morality or logic, killing machines that can only be stopped by brutal and merciless war.
Violence and victory
Fed by what seems like an unquenchable thirst for revenge, both sides to the conflict propose that violence will bring victory. The belief that victory is attainable by defeating the enemy in pitiless warfare is at the heart of the rhetoric of war. This is perhaps the most venomous myth in any conflict.
America, the Jesuit Review David Neuhaus, November 16, 2023
In the early morning of Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023, for Jews not only Sabbath but also Simchat Torah, a holy day celebrating the reading of the Torah, hundreds of armed Palestinian militants from Hamas broke through the barriers between the Gaza Strip and Israel or floated above them, pouring into Israel. They were accompanied by a barrage of missiles fired into Israel. They sowed terror and wreaked havoc, killing about 1,200, wounding thousands more and kidnapping over 240 Israeli soldiers and civilians.
The planning, implementation and ferocity of the attack took Israel by surprise—not only because Israeli intelligence had not uncovered the plot beforehand but also because the army took such a long time to neutralize the threat. Israelis were left shocked and horrified, while many Palestinians watched with a certain sense of vindication and some even rejoiced. Israel immediately responded with an intensive bombardment of Gaza, calling up its military reserves and massing its troops on the border with Gaza. The pounding intensity of the Israeli response was not only a reaction to the horrors that had been committed but also an attempt to restore some sense of security in military superiority after the shameful negligence that had allowed the attacks to take place.
The next day, Sunday, Oct. 8, Pope Francis addressed the world in his Angelus address:
I am following apprehensively and sorrowfully what is happening in Israel where violence has exploded yet more ferociously, causing hundreds of deaths and injured. I express my closeness to the families of the victims. I am praying for them and for all who are living hours of terror and anguish. May the attacks and weapons stop. Please! And may it be understood that terrorism and war do not lead to any resolutions, but only to the death and suffering of many innocent people. War is a defeat! Every war is a defeat. Let us pray that there be peace in Israel and in Palestine.
The Israeli Embassy to the Holy See reacted to this statement and those that followed with unease, claiming that the Holy Father and Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s secretary of state, were using a discourse that manifested “linguistic ambiguities and terms that allude to a false symmetry.” In insisting that Israel had a legitimate right to self-defense but should not indiscriminately bomb Gaza, the Holy See, the Israeli Embassy argued, was “suggesting parallelisms where they do not exist.”
The issue raised is a serious one. What language should one use to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? This is especially urgent at this time when the conflict takes on dimensions of violence that are unprecedented and emotions run high. How does one try to formulate a discourse that can encourage moderation, support dialogue and promote reconciliation even in the midst of battle? The issues involved are complex, but one must first recognize the morally problematic discourse that is being used by both sides in the conflict in order to dominate the narrative and garner uncritical support.
Whose side are you on?
The two sides to the decades-long conflict, Israelis and Palestinians, not only oppose each other with military arsenals but also attempt to mobilize public opinion at home and abroad in order to justify their actions. The military battle is parallel to the battle to control the images, sounds and words that are broadcast from the battlefield.
On the one hand, terrifying images of armed and masked Hamas militants pouring into Israel and wreaking destruction, killing, raping and maiming in a drunken orgy of vengeance began to appear in the media. These images capture the massacres of the Israeli men, women and children who were mowed down in the area bordering the Gaza Strip, among them hundreds of young people killed while at a music festival and dozens slaughtered, including babies in their cribs, in the taking of the small village of Kfar Aza. The scenes show bodies strewn in public places and in homes, with countless body bags displayed for all to see the enormity of the carnage. Photographs and short videos document the elderly women and young children taken hostage by Hamas, dragged back into the Gaza Strip together with dozens of others, provoking profound terror and searing rage.
On the other hand, Israel’s pummeling of the Gaza Strip with its sophisticated armory of precision weapons has provided a parallel and very different canon of images. Neighborhoods have been erased and high-rise buildings reduced to rubble in seconds, with thousands of Gazan men, women and children buried in the ruins. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans fleeing their homes provide more images of panic and desperation. On Oct. 13, the Israeli army ordered Gazans to evacuate the entire northern part of the Gaza Strip. Images of the flow of people carrying a few precious belongings added to the collection of heart-rending scenes.
The military battle is parallel to the battle to control the images, sounds and words that are broadcast from the battlefield.
This roll of images shows daily the extraction of an unending stream of bodies of men, women and children from their bombed homes, the writhing agony of the wounded carried off to overcrowded, underdeveloped and grossly overloaded hospitals, the non-stop shrieks of parents or children of the dead, their relatives and friends, gathered around the corpses of their loved ones.
The selection of images is at the heart of the implacable demand from both sides for uncritical solidarity, for support for the right to self-defense and legitimation of the means used against the other. In this battle for public opinion, many stand with Israel and many others with the Palestinians.
In the aftermath of the initial Hamas attack, President Biden declared that his country’s support for Israel was “rock solid and unwavering.” Leaders from major Western European countries followed suit. Israeli suffering was showcased to explain these unilateral manifestations of support. Israeli victims have names, faces, families and voices that cry out their pain in the media. Massive demonstrations have supported Israel, screaming out their condemnation of Hamas, some using expressions redolent of racism, anti-Arab sentiment and Islamophobia.
Palestinian suffering, although seemingly passed over by those who support Israel, is showcased in Arab, Muslim and many other countries, again galvanizing the sense that the world is unjust, that the powerful side with the powerful and the poor continue to be mercilessly exploited. Massive demonstrations of supporters of the Palestinians screamed out their condemnation of Israel, some using expressions redolent of antisemitism, and manifested a fury at what was termed the hypocrisy of mourning Jewish victims and ignoring Palestinian ones.
Who started it?
Israelis and Palestinians produce very different narratives concerning who is to blame for what is happening. In times of war, it is comforting to know who are the good and who are the bad; that way, the aggressor and the aggressed can be clearly separated from one another, one cheered on and the other excoriated.
On Oct. 7, Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, proclaimed: “We will take mighty vengeance,” as Israel launched its military campaign, named “Operation Swords of Iron.” For those supporting Israel, it is clear that the narrative begins on that black Saturday morning. Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated the following in his meeting with the press on October 12 : “There was no reason at all for this flaring up which ended in the worst tragedy that was ever inflicted in the history of Israel, and the highest number of Jews killed since the Holocaust, including Holocaust survivors
………………………………………………………… . The proportions of what happened on Oct. 7, however, not only raised a very acute question about the invincibility of Israel’s military and intelligence network but also raised the terrifying question about whether the state of Israel is after all a safe haven for Jews fleeing violence in a world in which they were a marginal and often persecuted minority.
Muhammad Dayf, the supreme commander of Hamas’s military wing, named this stage of the ongoing conflict “Al-Aqsa Storm” and declared: “Enough is enough!” Hamas declared that this incursion into Israel was itself a response to an ongoing occupation and repression that have been going on for decades. More precisely, Palestinians pointed to increasing Israeli attacks and repressive policies directed against Palestinians throughout the territories Israel had occupied since the Netanyahu rightwing coalition came to power, as well as the intensifying activity of Jewish extremists in the area of Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif (what Jews often call the Temple Mount). For those supporting the Palestinians, the success of Hamas’s attack surprised them as much as it did Israel. Well planned, well executed and devastatingly successful in its initial aims, the attack is not seen as a beginning but as a response to a long series of Israeli acts of violence.
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, said a few days before the present events that the Gaza Strip was “an open-air prison.”
The attack is justified by Hamas supporters as a reaction to the regime that has kept them enclosed in an overpopulated strip of land, mostly filled with sprawling refugee camps; Israel, they argue, has kept the Gaza Strip under a stranglehold siege. Refugees in Gaza constitute about 70 percent of the population, people driven out of the territories of the new state of Israel in 1948 and their descendants. The dire living conditions since then, worsened by periodic periods of confrontation with Israel since Hamas came to power in 2006, have left it battered and bruised, its population bleeding and its infrastructure regularly devastated. Furthermore, since 2006, the strip has been under a siege that deprives its residents of minimal conditions for life, prosperity and development. The newly-instituted Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, whose diocese includes Gaza, said a few days before the present events that the Gaza Strip was “an open-air prison.”
……………………………………………………………………………… The two sides are eager to show the other as demonic.
The Israeli point of view
In the media battle, supporters of Israel portray Hamas as Nazis, as ISIS, as servants of the evil empire of Islamic Iran. The use of images of some Palestinians rejoicing in the horrors visited upon Israelis solidifies the sense of horror and the contempt. Supporters of Israel point out that the people of Gaza elected Hamas and so argue that they are responsible for their own misfortune. Pointing to the long history of antisemitism and contempt for Jews in so many parts of the world, supporters of Israel present Israelis as the victims of unprovoked violence at the hands of bloodthirsty Palestinian terrorists, continuity in the suffering of the Jews throughout history.
……………………………………………………………………………………………. In the light of the fight against evil, the divisions that marked Israeli society in the past months have evaporated. Furthermore, the marked reservations that the Biden administration expressed with regard to Mr. Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition have also vanished, as Mr. Biden not only regularly calls in to express his support for Israel but also sends a steady stream of officials to manifest that support concretely, bringing assurances of diplomatic, military and economic assistance.
The Palestinian point of view
However, in the Arab and Muslim worlds and in many countries that have known colonialism, racism and exclusion, the Palestinians have succeeded in linking their struggle to a worldwide liberation struggle against colonialism, imperialism and white supremacy. Israelis are presented as colonial supremacists engaged in decades of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland. Hamas justifies the cruelty of its militants by portraying Israelis as colonial settlers whose only interest is the oppression and eventual extinction of Palestinians. Hamas has explained that it does not target civilians, chillingly adding that the elderly, babies, children and youth are all part of the colonial Zionist project to deprive Palestinians of their rights and banish them from the stage of history.
The portrayal of the other side as demonic justifies the means used to fight it. The enemy is dehumanized, commonly likened to savage animals that have lost any shadow of humanity, morality or logic, killing machines that can only be stopped by brutal and merciless war.
Violence and victory
Fed by what seems like an unquenchable thirst for revenge, both sides to the conflict propose that violence will bring victory. The belief that victory is attainable by defeating the enemy in pitiless warfare is at the heart of the rhetoric of war. This is perhaps the most venomous myth in any conflict.
……………………………………………… . Might the intensity of the present conflict and the terrible losses on both sides take us beyond the horizon of endless war with a growing recognition that victory is illusive and continued violence is ultimately suicidal?
The word of the church
The international community seems to have given up on trying to play a moderating role in the conflict, and those peace plans that were proposed by various international parties have gone nowhere…………………………………………………………..
In this context, the presence of the Catholic Church is particularly needed. Free of the constraints of political interests and avoiding as much as possible the games of international diplomacy, the church can be prophetic in reminding all that every human being—yes, even a Hamas militant or a Zionist settler—is created in the image and likeness of God.
America, the Jesuit Review Kevin Clarke, November 17, 2023
“So how do you draw people off, to stop thinking that their only possibilities are to become martyrs, [that] it doesn’t matter if they die or they take everyone in Gaza with them? Some of their supporters have to get through to them.”
The patrons of the combatants—the United States and Germany for Israel, and Iran and Qatar for Hamas, must pressure their clients to accept a cease-fire, she said. The agony at Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, where 36 infants cling to life after the hospital lost power to run their incubators, could prove a pivotal moment when maximum leverage can be brought to bear, according to Dr. O’Connell.
As tensions mount across the Middle East because of the continuing bloodshed in Gaza, the remnant forces of the United States in Syria and Iraq have come under fire from militant groups in sympathy with Hamas. More than 50 U.S. service members have suffered what have been described as minor injuries in the rocket attacks. On Nov. 11, U.S. aircraft conducted the third in a recent series of raids on Iran-backed militants in retaliation—this latest U.S. strike on a training facility and a safe house was perhaps the most devastating, and likely produced casualties.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame and of international peace studies at the university’s Kroc Institute, believes this tit-for-tat strategy is precisely the wrong response if regional de-escalation is indeed the desire of the Biden administration. “The airstrikes in Syria and Iraq by the United States need to stop immediately,” she said, describing them as “blatant violations of international law.”
If regional containment of the conflict remains a primary objective, she said, U.S. forces should refrain from military strikes outside acknowledged armed conflict zones. And, she said, the United States needs to be clear with Israel that U.S. assistance “is premised on Israel complying with international law across the board.”
An air strike on targets in Syria is precisely the wrong response if regional de-escalation is indeed the desire of the Biden administration.
But how to restore peace in Israel and Gaza after this historic outbreak of violence and mutual suffering? Dr. O’Connell said that it will take outside pressure on both parties. Israeli leadership seems determined—at least for now—to ignore a worldwide outcry over the human suffering it is creating in response to the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. And for its part, Hamas appears to be “in suicide mode.”
“So how do you draw people off, to stop thinking that their only possibilities are to become martyrs, [that] it doesn’t matter if they die or they take everyone in Gaza with them? Some of their supporters have to get through to them.”
The patrons of the combatants—the United States and Germany for Israel, and Iran and Qatar for Hamas, must pressure their clients to accept a cease-fire, she said. The agony at Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, where 36 infants cling to life after the hospital lost power to run their incubators, could prove a pivotal moment when maximum leverage can be brought to bear, according to Dr. O’Connell.
Patients and staff have endured for days without electricity and basic medical necessities as fighting raged around the hospital compound. The spectacle provoked a surge of negotiations in Riyadh, Doha and Cairo aimed at conflict pauses and hostage exchanges. On Nov. 15, I.D.F. soldiers seized control of Al-Shifa, searching for evidence of a Hamas presence inside and beneath the facility.
What in the end puts a stop to conflict is “always a negotiation,” Dr. O’Connell said. “It’s always trusted partners who come in.”
Over the long term, however, in Gaza and other hotspots in the Middle East like northern Iraq and Syria, peace will be the outcome of processes that require time and patience. Dr. O’Connell called “good governance” the real solution to the problem of terrorism because it “builds an economy where young people have a job, [where they] have a chance for a future.”
She lays partial blame for the violations of international norms evident in the Hamas assault on southern Israel and Israeli tolerance for high numbers of noncombatant casualties in its Gaza campaign on the example set by the United States. During its prosecution of the so-called war on terror and in follow-up campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan that effort set in motion, violations of international law in “targeted killing of all kinds” by U.S. forces became routine, she charged.
The United States has created a template for such military strikes, she said, deploying dubious appeals to international law to rationalize use of force. The strategy, she said, has been demonstrably counterproductive. “If we need to carry out this kind of warfare for 22 years, it’s obviously not effective,” Dr. O’Connell said.
Not only has the approach “not suppressed terrorism,” she said, it has “helped create a metastasizing new set of virulent organized armed groups across the north of Africa, into Somalia and other places,” including “the great catastrophe in Afghanistan.”
It has also significantly weakened esteem for the international rule of law related to human rights and war-making, according to Dr. O’Connell, connecting that decline to the utter disregard for norms demonstrated by the Russian Federation in Ukraine. “People don’t even understand anymore what the provisions of the U.N. Charter are, and they don’t take them seriously anymore because of these constant attempts at justifying [use of force] using looser and looser arguments under international law.”
The best sociological research on reversing the diminishing adherence to norms like the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law, according to Dr. O’Connell, calls for “a leading sovereign state modeling norm compliance.” She hopes the United States may accept that role.
Women are more concerned about global heating than men are. They also often face higher risks and greater burdens from the impacts of climate change in situations of poverty and due to existing roles, responsibilities and cultural norms.
Happily for the completely amoral nuclear lobby, this suits them very well. Already this year, they were targeting young women anyway – as part of their campaign “for the cool young people, not the fuddy duddy old nuclear sceptics“
Apart from their rather wacky publicists like Zion Lights, the nuke lobby has a few female champions to tote their toxic wares. There’s Kamala Harris, pushing nuclear to the Philippines, and the individual women being promoted to high office in nuclear industries.
The Nuclear Energy Agency’s report this year focussed on women, with its top recommendation:
“Attract women into the sector through public communications campaigns, enhancing the educational pipeline“
Of course, the nuke lobby is a huge fan of STEM education (Science Technology, Engineering and Maths) And, don’t get me wrong – girls definitely do need STEM education.
But they also need the humanities education – now downgraded in the current educational unbalanced glorification of the “hard science”
As for the “softer” sciences – biology, ecology …. the worrying thing is that for women, ionising radiation is more harmful than it is for men. A woman’s risk of cancer, especially breast cancer is a real hazard. And the risk to a pregnant woman is great, too, for damage to the foetus.
“This robust and comprehensive approach to regulating Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine program recognises the Albanese government’s commitment to nuclear stewardship and upholding the highest standards for nuclear safety and security,” Mr Marles said.
Organisations that breach nuclear safety regulations will be hit with fines of up to $31 million while individuals face up to 25 years jail under AUKUS-related laws to be introduced into parliament on Thursday.
The legislation establishes the regulatory framework overseeing the operations of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines that will initially be acquired from the US then built in Adelaide.
The Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulator will also be responsible for facilities in Australia for submarines, including rotational visits of US and UK boats, and designated zones, including Adelaide’s shipyard and Perth’s HMAS Stirling navy base.
The regulator will sit within the Defence portfolio but will be an independent statutory agency, headed by a director-general independent of the Defence Force and not subject to the ADF chain of command or directions from Defence and the Australian Submarine Agency.
The new regulator will have monitoring and investigative powers, including the power to determine legal compliance; whether information is accurate; and the powers necessary to investigate offences.
A licensing regime will be created for nuclear activities and new offences introduced for breaches of nuclear safety duties. The most serious breaches will attract a fine for a body corporate of up to $31 million and 25 years in jail.
A limited power will also be created allowing the defence minister of the day to direct the regulator. The power will be narrow in scope and only be used when the minister was satisfied it was necessary in the interests of national security and to deal with an emergency.
The government argues the existing nuclear safety regime and regulators – the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency and Environment Department – are insufficient for the demands of overseeing nuclear-powered submarines.
“This robust and comprehensive approach to regulating Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine program recognises the Albanese government’s commitment to nuclear stewardship and upholding the highest standards for nuclear safety and security,” Mr Marles said.
“The new regulator will have access to relevant expertise and experience, allowing it to cooperate effectively with other Australian regulators and those of our international partners.
“Today is another important step towards ensuring we employ the highest standards of nuclear safety and protection across the lifecycle of this historic capability.”
Nov 14, 2023, John Ainger, Rachel Morison and Akshat Rathi, Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg) — The US will lead a push at the COP28 climate summit to triple the amount of installed nuclear power capacity globally by 2050, marking a major turnaround for the controversial technology at the climate negotiations.
The declaration will call on the World Bank and other international financial institutions to include nuclear energy in their lending policies, according to a document seen by Bloomberg News. The US will likely be joined by the UK, France, Sweden, Finland and South Korea in the pledge to be signed Dec. 1 in Dubai, according to people familiar with the matter.
That will be followed a few days later by a nuclear industry commitment to triple generation resources from 2020 levels, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the information isn’t public.
“Nuclear is 100% part of the solution,” John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate, said at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum last week. “It’s clean energy.”
The countries recognize “the key role of nuclear energy in achieving global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions/carbon neutrality by or around mid-century,” a draft of the declaration says. ……….
The declaration is the latest sign of shifting sentiment toward nuclear power, which doesn’t produce carbon dioxide emissions, but has often been criticized over the waste it generates, the cost of building plants and potential security issues. ……… The countries will also commit to new technologies, such as small modular reactors.
…… The US is discussing nuclear cooperation agreements with Kenya and Ghana, and renewing a pact with South Africa, according to Joshua Volz, the US Department of Energy’s deputy assistant secretary for Europe, Eurasia, Africa and the Middle East.
A Son of the New American Revolution, 14 November 2023 by Larry Johnson
We now know that the United States played the primary role in sabotaging the March 29, 2022 tentative peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine thanks to the recently published article by Hajo Funke and Harald Kujat, HOW THE CHANCE WAS LOST FOR A PEACE SETTLEMENT OF THE UKRAINE WAR — AND THE WEST WANTED TO CONTINUE THE WAR INSTEAD. The United States persuaded its NATO allies that pursuing the war against Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy, offered a legitimate opportunity to destroy Russia. You want a definition of evil? This is it. Instead of helping end the war between Russia and Ukraine, the United States and its NATO puppets condemned hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers to death in a war with Russia they could not win.
In the course of strong arming Ukraine’s Zelensky into rejecting the peace agreement, the West prepared and launched a propaganda campaign that claimed that Ukrainian military forces defeated the Russian forces and compelled them to retreat. It was a lie. As you will read in the timeline below, Putin ordered the withdrawal of Russian forces starting on April 1, 2022 as a good faith gesture about Russia’s seriousness in complying with the 29 March Istanbul Agreement.
Chalk this up as one more massive war crime by the United States and NATO. They are accessories to murder. I have summarized the timeline presented in the Funke/Kujat article if you do not have time to read it in its entirety. I also am republishing their piece for your convenience. All of the death and destruction experienced in Ukraine and Russia could have been avoided. But the West was intent on dethroning Putin and carving up Russia. Once you understand this point I think you will appreciate that Putin and his Generals are no longer of a mind to give the West the benefit of the doubt. Destroying NATO’s designs on Ukraine is now their chief aim in my view.
March 4, 2022 — Putin and Naftali Bennet speak via phone.
March 5, 2022 — At Putin’s invitation, former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett flew to Moscow. Putin, Bennett said, had made some substantial concessions, in particular, he had renounced his original wartime goal of demilitarizing Ukraine. … .In return, the Ukrainian president agreed to renounce joining NATO. The Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed.”
March 6, 2022 — Bennett and Scholz met in Berlin; on March 7, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany discussed the issue in a videoconference; on
March 8, 2022 — Macron and Scholz spoke on the phone; on
March 10, 2022 — Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov met in Ankara; on
March 12, 2022 — Scholz and Zelensky and Scholz and Macron spoke on the phone; and on
March 14, 2022 — Scholz and Erdogan met in Ankara.
March 15-19, 2022 — Only a month after the outbreak of the war, Ukraine and Russia agreed on the broad outlines of a peace settlement. Ukraine promised not to join NATO and not to allow military bases of foreign powers on its territory, while Russia promised in return to recognize Ukraine’s territorial integrity and to withdraw all Russian occupation troops. Special arrangements were made for the Donbas and Crimea.”
March 24, 2022 — NATO decided at a special summit on March 24, 2022, not to support these peace negotiations.
March 27, 2022 — Zelensky defended the results of the Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations in public before Russian journalists
March 28, 2022 — Putin, as a sign of goodwill and in support of the peace negotiations, declared readiness to withdraw troops from the Kharkov area and the Kiev area
29 March, 2002 — Turkiye’s President Erdogan hosted a Ukrainian-Russian peace conference in Istanbul and an armistice agreement was approved in principle.
April 1, 2022 — Putin orders Russian troops to initiate withdrawal from Kiev and Kharkiv in show of good faith in accordance with the armistice agreed to in Istanbul.
April 5, 2022 — NATO was firm in its position that continuing the war is preferred to a cease-fire and negotiated settlement: “For some in NATO, it’s better for Ukrainians to keep fighting and dying than to achieve a peace that comes too soon or at too high a price for Kiev and the rest of Europe.”
April 6, 2022 — Russia completes withdrawal from Kiev suburbs and Kharkiv.
April 9, 2022 — Boris Johnson arrived unannounced in Kiev and told the Ukrainian president that the West was not ready to end the war.
April 25, 2022 — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the U.S. wants to use the opportunity to permanently weaken Russia militarily and economically in the wake of the Ukraine war.
April 26, 2022 — Meeting with defense ministers from NATO members and other countries convened by Austin in Ramstein, Rhineland-Palatinate/ Germany, the Pentagon chief declared the military victory of Ukraine as a strategic goal.
April 28, 2022 — According to Britain’s Guardian, PM Johnson “instructed” Ukrainian President Zelensky “not to make any concessions to Putin.”
HOW THE UNITED STATES AND ITS NATO ALLIES SABOTAGED PEACE BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE
We now know that the United States played the primary role in sabotaging the March 29, 2022 tentative peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine thanks to the recently published article by Hajo Funke and Harald Kujat, HOW THE CHANCE WAS LOST FOR A PEACE SETTLEMENT OF THE UKRAINE WAR — AND THE WEST WANTED TO CONTINUE THE WAR INSTEAD. The United States persuaded its NATO allies that pursuing the war against Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy, offered a legitimate opportunity to destroy Russia. You want a definition of evil? This is it. Instead of helping end the war between Russia and Ukraine, the United States and its NATO puppets condemned hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers to death in a war with Russia they could not win.
In the course of strong arming Ukraine’s Zelensky into rejecting the peace agreement, the West prepared and launched a propaganda campaign that claimed that Ukrainian military forces defeated the Russian forces and compelled them to retreat. It was a lie. As you will read in the timeline below, Putin ordered the withdrawal of Russian forces starting on April 1, 2022 as a good faith gesture about Russia’s seriousness in complying with the 29 March Istanbul Agreement.
Chalk this up as one more massive war crime by the United States and NATO. They are accessories to murder. I have summarized the timeline presented in the Funke/Kujat article if you do not have time to read it in its entirety. I also am republishing their piece for your convenience. All of the death and destruction experienced in Ukraine and Russia could have been avoided. But the West was intent on dethroning Putin and carving up Russia. Once you understand this point I think you will appreciate that Putin and his Generals are no longer of a mind to give the West the benefit of the doubt. Destroying NATO’s designs on Ukraine is now their chief aim in my view.
March 4, 2022 — Putin and Naftali Bennet speak via phone.
March 5, 2022 — At Putin’s invitation, former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett flew to Moscow. Putin, Bennett said, had made some substantial concessions, in particular, he had renounced his original wartime goal of demilitarizing Ukraine. … .In return, the Ukrainian president agreed to renounce joining NATO. The Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed.”
March 6, 2022 — Bennett and Scholz met in Berlin; on March 7, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany discussed the issue in a videoconference; on
March 8, 2022 — Macron and Scholz spoke on the phone; on
March 10, 2022 — Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov met in Ankara; on
March 12, 2022 — Scholz and Zelensky and Scholz and Macron spoke on the phone; and on
March 14, 2022 — Scholz and Erdogan met in Ankara.
March 15-19, 2022 — Only a month after the outbreak of the war, Ukraine and Russia agreed on the broad outlines of a peace settlement. Ukraine promised not to join NATO and not to allow military bases of foreign powers on its territory, while Russia promised in return to recognize Ukraine’s territorial integrity and to withdraw all Russian occupation troops. Special arrangements were made for the Donbas and Crimea.”
March 24, 2022 — NATO decided at a special summit on March 24, 2022, not to support these peace negotiations.
March 27, 2022 — Zelensky defended the results of the Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations in public before Russian journalists
March 28, 2022 — Putin, as a sign of goodwill and in support of the peace negotiations, declared readiness to withdraw troops from the Kharkov area and the Kiev area
29 March, 2002 — Turkiye’s President Erdogan hosted a Ukrainian-Russian peace conference in Istanbul and an armistice agreement was approved in principle.
April 1, 2022 — Putin orders Russian troops to initiate withdrawal from Kiev and Kharkiv in show of good faith in accordance with the armistice agreed to in Istanbul.
April 5, 2022 — NATO was firm in its position that continuing the war is preferred to a cease-fire and negotiated settlement: “For some in NATO, it’s better for Ukrainians to keep fighting and dying than to achieve a peace that comes too soon or at too high a price for Kiev and the rest of Europe.”
April 6, 2022 — Russia completes withdrawal from Kiev suburbs and Kharkiv.
April 9, 2022 — Boris Johnson arrived unannounced in Kiev and told the Ukrainian president that the West was not ready to end the war.
April 25, 2022 — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the U.S. wants to use the opportunity to permanently weaken Russia militarily and economically in the wake of the Ukraine war.
April 26, 2022 — Meeting with defense ministers from NATO members and other countries convened by Austin in Ramstein, Rhineland-Palatinate/ Germany, the Pentagon chief declared the military victory of Ukraine as a strategic goal.
April 28, 2022 — According to Britain’s Guardian, PM Johnson “instructed” Ukrainian President Zelensky “not to make any concessions to Putin.”
In March 2022, direct peace negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations and mediation efforts by the then Israeli Prime Minster, Naftali Bennet created a genuine chance for ending the war peacefully only four to five weeks after Russia had invaded Ukraine. However, instead of ending the war through negotiations as Ukrainian President Zelensky and his government appeared to have wanted, he ultimately bowed to pressures from some Western powers to abandon a negotiated solution. Western powers wanted this war to continue in the hope to break Russia. Ukraine’s decision to abandon negotiations may been taken before the discovery of a massacre of civilians in the town of Bucha near Kiev.
In the following is an attempt of a step-by-step reconstruction of the events that led to the peace negotiations in March and their collapse in early April 2022…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
CONCLUSION: MISSED OPPORTUNITY
Based on the publicly available reports and documents, it is not only plain that there was a serious willingness to negotiate on the part of both Ukraine and Russia in March 2022. Apparently, the negotiating parties even agreed on a draft treaty ad referendum. Zelensky and Putin were ready for a bilateral meeting to finalize the outcome of the negotiations. Fact is that the main results of the negotiations were based on a proposal by Ukraine, and Zelenskyy courageously supported them in an interview with Russian journalists on March 27, 2022, even after NATO decided against these peace negotiations. Zelensky had already expressed similar support beforehand in a sign that proves that the intended outcome of the Istanbul negotiations certainly corresponded to Ukrainian interests. This makes the Western intervention, which prevented an early end to the war, even more disastrous for Ukraine. Russia’s responsibility for the attack, which was contrary to international law, is not relativized by the fact that responsibility for the grave consequences that Ukraine’s Western supporters that ensued must also be attributed to the states that demanded the continuation of the war. The war has now reached a stage where further dangerous escalation and an expansion of hostilities can only be prevented by a cease-fire. It may now be the last time that a peaceful resolution through negotiations could be achieved. There are peace proposals from China, the African Union, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, and a proposal developed at the invitation of the Vatican as early as June 2022. On 3 October this year, we presented the German Government our own peace proposal that tried to incorporate all other peace proposals made earlier. See Ending the war by a negotiated peace – Legitimate self-defense and the quest for a just and lasting peace are not contradictory HERE.
what the Biden administration really needs is a cover story to justify the fact that it is continuing to supply the weapons and funding needed by Israel to carry out its crimes in broad daylight
The White House needs a cover story to obscure its complicity. In desperation, it is once again resurrecting the long-dead two-state solution
The White House faces a dilemma. It has the power to stop the death and destruction in Gaza in its tracks, at any time of its choosing. But it chooses not to.
The US is determined to back its client state to the hilt, giving Israel licence to wreck the tiny coastal enclave, seemingly whatever the cost in Palestinian lives.
But the optics – and that is all that concerns Washington – are disastrous.
TV images have shown hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing their destroyed homes, on a scale unseen since Israel’s earlier mass ethnic cleansing operations of 1948 and 1967.
Even the western media is struggling to obscure the veritable mountain of crushed and bleeding bodies in Gaza. The known death toll has now surpassed 11,000, with thousands more buried under rubble. Those who survive face a genocidal policy, starving them of food, water and power.
By the weekend, Israel’s declared war on Hamas had shifted into an open war on Gaza’s hospitals. Medicins San Frontieres reported that al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City had been bombed repeatedly and its power cut off, with horrific scenes of premature babies dying after their incubators had stopped functioning. Staff who tried to evacuate, as Israel had ordered them to, were shot at. Similar scenes unfolded at al-Rantisi hospital.
Western publics are growing increasingly incensed. Protest marches have attracted numbers not seen since the mass demonstrations against the Iraq war 20 years ago.
Western allies are finding it harder to obscure and justify their complicity in what are indisputable Israeli crimes against humanity. French President Emmanuel Macron broke ranks at the weekend. His message was summed up bluntly by the BBC: “Macron calls on Israel to stop killing Gaza’s women and babies.”
Its immediate response has been desperate, and preposterous, stop-gaps to ease the criticism, including from 500 administration staff who submitted a letter to Biden on Tuesday protesting the White House’s blanket support for Israel.
Those measures have included the president calling for “less intrusive action” from Israel towards the hospitals, shortly before Israeli forces were reported storming al-Shifa, and rumours that Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who joined the US attack on Iraq in 2003 in violation of international law, might serve as the West’s “humanitarian coordinator” in Gaza.
Never-ending occupation
But what the Biden administration really needs is a cover story to justify the fact that it is continuing to supply the weapons and funding needed by Israel to carry out its crimes in broad daylight.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken set out his stall last week at the G7 summit. The goal is to shift the focus away from Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza, and Washington’s backing for them, to a purely theoretical discussion about what might happen after the fighting ends…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The no-state solution
The truth is that Washington formally abandoned the so-called two-state solution years ago, aware that Israel would never allow even the most circumscribed of Palestinian states.
Over the past three decades, Israel has gone from the pretence – maintained during the Oslo process – that it might one day concede a sham, demilitarised Palestinian state, cut off from the rest of the Middle East, to outright rejection of Palestinian statehood on any terms at all. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The goal is transparent: to expel Gaza’s population into the neighbouring Egyptian territory of Sinai. And given Israel’s previous form, the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that Gaza’s refugee families – some of them about to be exiled by Israel for a second or third time – will never be allowed to return to the ruins.
The Biden administration can pretend to be resurrecting a non-existent two-state solution. But the reality is that Israel has had just such an expulsion plan – called the Greater Gaza Plan – on the drawing board for decades.
According to reports, Washington has been signed up to the creation of a Palestinian enclave in Sinai since at least 2007…………………………………………………………………………………………………..
No eradicating Hamas
But perhaps the most fraudulent of the White House deceptions is the assumption that Hamas – and by extension, all Palestinian resistance – can be eradicated from Gaza……………………………………………………………………….
Israel’s genocidal policies – unless it intends to wipe out every Palestinian in Gaza – will not moderate that impulse for resistance. Israel will simply inflame more anger and resentment, and a stronger motive for vengeance. ……………………………………………..
Israel and the US know all this, too. History is crammed full of such lessons taught to greedy, arrogant colonisers and occupiers.
But their goal, whatever they claim, is not a solution or a resolution. It is permanent war. It is perpetuating the “cycle of violence”. It is greasing the tank treads of the West’s profitable war machine by spawning the very enemies that western publics are told they need protecting from.
Whether Palestinians are returned to the Stone Age in Gaza, as Israeli military commanders have long desired, or expelled to live in refugee camps in Sinai, they will not accept a fate in which they are treated as “human animals”.
What we are seeing at the moment in Palestine is the end of settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is a phenomenon of the last two centuries or so, and it is always accompanied by genocide.
Bombing hospitals was, just a few days ago, an undeclared red line the Israel Defense Forces dared not cross without provoking international disgust and condemnation. At writing, the IDF is bombing hospitals and, I read, its soldiers are shooting patients, invalids among them, as they attempt to evacuate buildings soon to be demolished.
There is disgust and condemnation now, and they find expression not only on the streets of many cities but also in governing circles. Axios reported Monday that an internal State Department memo, signed by 100 officials at State and its aid agency, USAID, accuses President Biden of lying about Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and of complicity in war crimes. On Tuesday, The New York Times put the signatories of another letter to Biden at 400 representing 40 government departments and agencies, including the National Security Council — this in addition to an open letter to Secretary of State Blinken signed by more than 1,000 Agency for International Development employees. So far as I know, this measure of dissent in policy and governing circles is more or less unprecedented.
Beyond our purple mountains and fruited plains, the Irish Dáil will vote this week on expelling the Israeli ambassador, throwing Israel out of a European Union trade accord for breaching its human-rights clauses, and—a Sinn Féin motion—referring Israel to the International Criminal Court. Emmanuel Macron came out last weekend calling for a ceasefire, the first Western leader to do so. Given Biden’s defiant refusal even to consider asking Israel to accept a ceasefire, the French president has implicitly issued a rejection of Israeli violence and the U.S. policy supporting it.
We cannot make too much of events such as these, but we must not make too little of them, either. These are signs on the surface of much deeper movements a few meters down in our civilization’s soil. Things are gradually coming apart in consequence of Israel’s savagery and America’s abetment of it, at home in the U.S., in the Atlantic world altogether and certainly between the West and the world beyond it. Now it is time to look forward to see what we can see of the world to come.
Christopher Lydon, who produces Radio Open Source for WBUR in Boston, suggested over the weekend we have reached “a hinge in history—outcomes wildly uncertain.” He made this remark at the start of a long interview with Chas Freeman, the retired ambassador for whom I share with Lydon great admiration. Freeman agreed with the hinge-of-history thought. So do I. All is changing, changing utterly, if you will let me borrow and bend Yeats’s famous line.
Here is Chas on our moment:
This is clearly what Chancellor Scholz of Germany calls a Zeitenwende—that is, an epic-changing moment, a time of major change in a new direction in history. We’ve talked before about the fact that 500 years of global dominance by the Euro–American culture, the Atlantic culture, has come to an end.
The only exception I can think of is New Zealand, where Māori power countered the British sufficiently to preserve their culture as a separate one….What we are seeing at the moment in Palestine is the end of settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is a phenomenon of the last two centuries or so, and it is always accompanied by genocide.
It may seem unlikely that the Palestinians will do as well resisting the hegemonic West as the Māori in the 19th century, although outcomes, as Chris Lydon says, are wildly uncertain. In any case, one does not want to see a separate, even segregated Palestinian entity emerge from the Israel–Palestine catastrophe so much as a single, secular nation in which cultures of all sorts are integrated and, more than tolerant, wholly accepting of one another. So I argued recently in this space.
Never mind that the nuclear fuel chain emits greenhouse gases at every stage (including a minimal output from the actual reactor).
Never mind that nuclear power is itself very vulnerable to climate change – quite the opposite thing to nuclear being a fix for climate change,
As if they care about the facts, about the truth!
The nuclear industry lives on for really just one reason – the same reason for which it was started – it is essential for the nuclear weapons industry. Where it’s not directly applied to weapons-making – it still provides the “respectability” – and the training, expertise, technical developments, that provide a benign cover for its real purpose,
The current hype about nuclear as a cure for climate change is just a brilliant stroke of dishonest opportunism.
You’ve got to hand it to these well-funded lobbies, and their army of dishonest Stink Tanks, and servile media. Like their despicable mates, the fossil fuel lobbies – they’ ll be there in style sabotaging the COP 28, hypocritically flaunting their crooked wares. Not a shred of honesty. Not a shred of integrity. No shame about their crooked agenda.
Across Australia’s universities, the AUKUS military initiative between the US, UK and Australia, primarily focused on developing nuclear powered technology for a new submarine design, has titillated the managerial wonks of the tertiary education sector. In September, the Defence Department announcedthat 4,000 additional Commonwealth supported places (CSPs) for undergraduate students would be funded as part of its “Nuclear-Powered Submarine Student Pathways” strategy.
Then come the true villains of the peace, the arms manufacturers and companies that make the military-university-industrial complex intimate and obscene.
For anyone wishing to bury secrets, especially of the unsavoury sort, there is one forum that stands out. Call it a higher education institution. Call it a university. Even better, capitalise it: the University. This is certainly the case in Australia, where education is less a pursuit of knowledge as the acquiring of a commodity, laid out spam for so much return. On that vast island continent, the university, dominated by a largely semi-literate and utterly unaccountable management, is a place where secrets are buried, concealed with a gleeful dedication verging on mania.
In its submissionto what will hopefully become the Australian Universities Accord, the Australian Association of University Professors (AAUP) notes the following: “Unfortunately, university managements are increasingly disconnected from and unaccountable to academic values and academic communities. Students, Government and granting bodies, pay universities to deliver services according to academic values, but academics are impeded from working in accordance with academic values by interfering management. Further, the managers themselves do not work in accordance with academic values.”
Those in the defence industry have taken note. By turning such institutions of instruction into supply lines for research and development in armaments, they can be assured of secrecy conditions the envy of most intelligence agencies. Consulting, viewing, gaining access to relevant agreements, documentation and projects for reasons of public discussion is virtually impossible. These are always seen as “commercial” and “in confidence”.
Only the overly fed and watered members of the University Politburo are granted such access. Entry into the arcana of its deliberations is ceremonially tolerated via Academic Board meetings or Senatorial deliberations. Furthermore, academics throughout the university sport a reliable, moral flabbiness that will prevent them from spilling the beans and airing a troubled conscience, even in cases where leaking the documentation might be possible. Middle class, mortgage-laden status anxiety is the usual formula here, one that neuters revolutionary spirits – not that there was much to begin with.
Across Australia’s universities, the AUKUS military initiative between the US, UK and Australia, primarily focused on developing nuclear powered technology for a new submarine design, has titillated the managerial wonks of the tertiary education sector. In September, the Defence Department announcedthat 4,000 additional Commonwealth supported places (CSPs) for undergraduate students would be funded as part of its “Nuclear-Powered Submarine Student Pathways” strategy.
Institutes have sprung up running short courses to rake in the cash, such as the UWA Defence and Security Institute, whichproudly claims to have created the “essential course for those seeking to gain a greater understanding of AUKUS Pillar 1 (nuclear powered submarines) and the impacts for Western Australia and beyond.” A course running for thirteen hours does not seem particularly hefty, but this is a field of glitz over substance.
Then come the true villains of the peace, the arms manufacturers and companies that make the military-university-industrial complex intimate and obscene. One of interest here is Israel’s Elbit Systems. For years, it has hammered out a reputation for manufacturing such lethal products as the Hermes 900 drone, which was first deployed in 2014 against targets in the Gaza Strip. It supplies the lion’s share of drones used by the Israeli Defence Forces for strikes and surveillance (the figure may be as high as 85%).
The company has managed to beef up many an activist’s resumé. Members of the Palestine Action group claim to have scored a victory in securing the permanent closure of two of Elbit’s sites in 2022, including the London head office. “The cracks in Elbit’s warehouse windows,” the organisation trumpetedin August this year, “do not simply represent cosmetic damage but also symbolise the crumbling foundations of Elbit’s relationship with the British State’s so-called defence interests.”
The corporation has also fallen out of favour with a number of investors. HSBC and the French multinational AXA Investment Managers divested from the company in 2018 and 2019 given its rolein producing and commercialising cluster munitions and white phosphoros shells. In May 2022, the Australian sovereign wealth fund, Future Fund, excludedElbit Systems Limited from its investment portfolio for much the same reasons.
Despite this blotched and blotted record, Elbit could still stealthily establish a bridgehead in the university sector down under through its creation, in 2021, of a Centre of Excellence in Human-Machine Teaming and Artificial Intelligence in Port Melbourne. Elbit Systems of Australia (ELSA) had two special clients: the state government of Victoria, which provided some funding via Invest Victoria, and RMIT University’s Centre for Industrial AI Research and Innovation. The two-year partnership with ELSA’s Centre of Excellence was intended to, accordingto ELSA’s then managing director and retired Major General Paul McLachlan, “research how to use drones to count the number of people in designated evacuation zones, then to co-ordinate and communicate the most efficient evacuation routes to everyone in the zone, as well as monitoring the area to ensure that everyone has been accounted for.”
Despite such seemingly noble goals, the opening ceremony in February 2021 had a distinctly heavy military accent, with senior representatives from the Royal Australian Airforce, DST (Defence Science and Technology) Group and the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG). No one present could deny that technology used in the context of civilian evacuations in the face of natural disaster could just as well be deployed in a military security context. As Antony Loewensteinhas observed, “If you partner, as a state or a university, with a company like Elbit, you have blood on your hands because the record of Elbit in Israel-Palestine, on the US-Mexican border and elsewhere is so damned clear.”
Since the Hamas attacks on Israeli soil that took place on October 7, the ELSA-RMIT-Victorian relationship has seemingly altered. A war of horrendous carnage is being waged in the Gaza Strip. Activists claim to have scored a famous victory in securing the university’s hazy termination of any partnership with ELSA. “This is a significant victory for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Australia,” claimsHilmi Dabbagh of BDS Australia. “Australian universities have been put on notice that they will be targeted if they partner with any Israeli company or institution complicit in human rights abuses and attacks on Palestinians.”
Such confidence is admirably fresh, if a touch green. It is worth looking at theuniversity statement, which is revealing in ways that have been entirely missed in the enthusiastic pronouncements of the BDS movement. The university claims to “not design, develop or manufacture weapons or munitions in the university or as part of any partnership. With regard to Elbit Systems, RMIT does not have a partnership with Elbit Systems or any of their subsidiaries, including Elbit Systems of Australia (ELSA).” Such wording avoids the language of termination, leaving the question open as to whether it ever had an arrangement to begin with, with its requisite project links. This will, as with much else, be deemed commercial, in confidence, and buried in the bowels of secrecy we have come to expect from the antipodean university sector.
Abipartisan group of 16 members of Congress has called on President Biden to drop the case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, warning of the grave threats to press freedom if he is convicted.
The lawmakers made the call in a letter sent to President Biden on Wednesday. The effort was led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and James McGovern (D-MA), who began circulating the letter to their colleagues for signatures last month.
“It is the duty of journalists to seek out sources, including documentary evidence, in order to report to the public on the activities of government,” the letter reads, according to a press release from Assange Defense.
“The United States must not pursue an unnecessary prosecution that risks criminalizing common journalistic practices and thus chilling the work of the free press. We urge you to ensure that this case be brought to a close in as timely a manner as possible,” the letter states.
The letter was also signed by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Greg Casar (D-TX), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Cori Bush (D-MO), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Eric Burlison (R-MO), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Jesús García (D-IL), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Matthew Rosendale (R-MT), and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).
The letter comes as the Biden administration has been under pressure from the Australian government to free Assange, who is an Australian citizen. In September, a delegation of Australian members of parliament from across the political spectrum visited Washington and met with US officials to lobby for Assange. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese brought up the case with President Biden when he visited the White House in October.
Assange faces up to 175 years in prison if extradited to the US and convicted for exposing US war crimes. The charges stem from documents published by WikiLeaks that Assange obtained from his source, former Army Private Chelsea Manning, a standard journalistic practice. Assange has been held in London’s Belmarsh Prison since April 2019 as his legal team is fighting against US efforts to extradite him.
How a false claim about wind turbines killing whales is spinning out of control in coastal Australia. Windfarm critics claim projects will harm marine life. Scientists say that’s not backed by credible evidence.
Dichter’s comments are surprising not only because Israel has been publicly framing the mass displacement in Gaza as a measure taken solely to protect civilians, but also because the Israeli government has long officially denied that the Nakba ever happened, even passing laws forbidding its history to be taught in schools.
One problem Israel keeps running into is how the institutionalized dehumanization of Palestinians which keeps the apartheid state operational also causes Israelis to say things that non-Israelis will find extremely shocking, which hurts Israel’s PR interests.
We saw this illustrated in a recent New Yorker interview with Daniella Weiss, a leader of the push to build illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Weiss stated frankly and unapologetically that she supports apartheid, that she doesn’t believe Palestinians should have any sovereignty anywhere, that she doesn’t believe Palestinians should have voting rights, that she wants the population of Gaza to be replaced by Israeli settlements, and that she is untroubled by the killing of children in Gaza because she feels it’s being done in the interests of Israeli children.
Asked where the Palestinians in Gaza should go, Weiss replied, “To Sinai, to Egypt, to Turkey.” When the interviewer said the Palestinians are not Egyptian or Turkish, she contended that “The Ukrainians are not French, but when the war started they went to many countries.”
To the question “When you see Palestinian children dying, what’s your emotional reaction as a human being?”, Weiss answered, “I go by a very basic human law of nature. My children are prior to the children of the enemy, period. They are first. My children are first.”
Asked if she believes human rights are not universal and should not apply equally to everyone, Weiss replied “That’s right.”
But perhaps the most revealing statement Weiss made was her entirely truthful explanation of what drives the Israeli push to colonize Palestinian land:
“In Israel, there’s a lot of support for settlements, and this is why there have been right-wing governments for so many years. The world, especially the United States, thinks there is an option for a Palestinian state, and, if we continue to build communities, then we block the option for a Palestinian state. We want to close the option for a Palestinian state, and the world wants to leave the option open. It’s a very simple thing to understand.”
That one paragraph right there will teach you more about the present-day realities of the Israel-Palestine conflict than an entire year of watching CNN. It’s horrid, and it’s jarring to hear it spoken out loud in a favorable way… but it’s true.
This sort of thing has been happening for years. Israelis who’ve been marinating in a self-validating echo chamber of Zionist ideology which dehumanizes Palestinians and normalizes oppression and abuse don’t think twice about saying things that make Israel look bad on the world stage, because to them it’s just the standard status quo way of looking at things.
In 2021 a settler from New York named Yaakov Fauci made headlines around the world with his candid statements to a Palestinian family whose Sheikh Jarrah home he was squatting in.
Fauci, apparently fully aware that he was being filmed, famously replied to the family’s complaints that he was stealing their home by shamelessly telling them, “If I don’t steal it, someone else will steal it.”
And the thing is, he wasn’t lying. He was truthfully describing an abusive dynamic in apartheid Israel where Palestinians are being forced out of their homes in order to control ethnic demographics and advance the agenda outlined above by Daniella Weiss. If he’d been a trained propagandist for the Israeli state he never would have made such comments on camera, but because he was just a Zionism-indocrinated member of the Israeli public he saw no reason to hold his tongue.
Some years ago The Empire Files’ Abby Martin put together a devastating critique of the Zionist ideology just by going around the streets of Jerusalem with a camera and a microphone and talking to Jewish Israelis about their views on Palestinians. Over and over and over again they shared their support for tyranny, murder, genocide and ethnic cleansing in their own words and without hesitation, never thinking that their words could be used to harm Israel’s image, because to them these were just normal things that they said all the time in their day to day life.
You see the same sort of thing when Israelis are filmed sitting in lawn chairs to watch and cheer IDF bombing operations on Palestinian neighborhoods, during which a woman once told the press “I’m just a little bit fascist” after advocating the total destruction of Gaza City.
Every time this happens it sends viral video footage around the internet and does real damage to the world’s perception of Israel. That’s a big part of why Israel is struggling to control the narrative about the Gaza massacre today, which is in turn being exacerbated by more incendiary statements by Israelis, not just from the general public but from within the Israeli government itself.
On Saturday Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter casually referred to the violent forced expulsion of Palestinians from the northern half of the Gaza Strip as “Nakba 2023”, a reference to the violent forced expulsion which was inflicted on Palestinians at the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948.
Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter (Likud) was asked in a news interview on Saturday whether the images of northern Gaza Strip residents evacuating south on the IDF’s orders are comparable to images of the Nakba. He replied: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war — as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza — with masses between the tanks and the soldiers.”
When asked again whether this was the “Gaza Nakba”, Dichter — a member of the security cabinet and former Shin Bet director — said “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”
When later asked if this means Gaza City residents won’t be allowed to return, he replied: “I don’t know how it’ll end up happening since Gaza City is one-third of the Strip — half the land’s population but a third of the territory.”
Dichter’s comments are surprising not only because Israel has been publicly framing the mass displacement in Gaza as a measure taken solely to protect civilians, but also because the Israeli government has long officially denied that the Nakba ever happened, even passing laws forbidding its history to be taught in schools.
Even as western officials hasten to frame Israel’s actions as a defensive and measured response to the Hamas attack on October 7, Israeli officials have been falling all over themselves in a mad rush to make those western officials look like liars.
When talking about the Gaza assault Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made headlines by invoking the biblical nation of Amalek, whose people God instructed the Israelites to commit total genocide against. The first book of Samuel contains the instructions, “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”
President Isaac Herzog insinuated last month that all civilians in Gaza are legitimate military targets because they failed to overthrow Hamas, saying, “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”
When announcing the total siege on Gaza which would see the enclave cut off from electricity, food, water and fuel, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant stated that “we are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israel would turn Gaza into a “city of tents” and that Israel’s “emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy” in its bombing campaign.
Dan Gillerman, Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, said last month that “I am very puzzled by the constant concern which the world is showing for the Palestinian people and is actually showing for these horrible, inhuman animals who have done the worst atrocities that this century has seen.”
“Hamas became ISIS and the citizens of Gaza are celebrating instead of being horrified,” The Economist cites an Israeli general saying last month. “Human beasts are dealt with accordingly.”
“Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal,” a major general named Giora Eiland wrote in an Israeli newspaper, adding, “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”
Israel’s allies keep trying to portray it as a rational actor and a positive force in the world, but if you listen to Israelis themselves you get a very different understanding of what this murderous apartheid state is actually about.
As Maya Angelou said, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
Transparency requirements in the U.S. forced NuScale proponents to disclose the projected costs of electricity to potential investors on a regular basis. This is not the case in Canada.
none of the Canadian nuclear proponents have laid out the projected costs of electricity production. In New Brunswick, the government has changed legislationto force the electricity utility to purchase power from new nuclear reactors even when it is not the lowest cost option.
The sudden cancellation last week of the first small nuclear reactor project in the United States, the NuScale project, calls into question the economic viability of Canada’s plans to develop and deploy small modular reactors.
Potential customers in Utah balked at the soaring projections for the cost of electricity the NuScale reactor would generate, and the project was unable to recruit other customers to buy its power.
Today, in response, civil society groups across Canada are demanding transparency and accountability for the costs of other small nuclear reactor designs planned in this country.
“Canada should stop writing blank cheques to nuclear promoters who cannot deliver on their promises of cheap, reliable electricity,” said Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.
Transparency requirements in the U.S. forced NuScale proponents to disclose the projected costs of electricity to potential investors on a regular basis. This is not the case in Canada.
Earlier this year, the target price for electricity from the NuScale project rose by over 50 percent to $89 US per MWh ($122.99 Canadian) with indications that future increases would be forthcoming. Investor confidence was shaken, and the project was scrapped.
The NuScale reactor design has been in development for more than 15 years and the company’s first commercial joint venture with electrical utilities in Utah was launched in 2015.
Governments in New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta have committed to building small reactors, while the Quebec government is conducting feasibility studies.
However, none of the Canadian nuclear proponents have laid out the projected costs of electricity production. In New Brunswick, the government has changed legislationto force the electricity utility to purchase power from new nuclear reactors even when it is not the lowest cost option.
Three years ago, more than 140 civil society groups across Canada signed a statement calling the proposed new reactors a “dirty, dangerous distraction,” from real climate action.
Nuclear critics have consistently said these new reactor designs will take too long to develop, and will cost too much compared with existing proven renewable energy option, to deal effectively with the climate crisis that requires immediate action.
To date, federal and provincial taxpayers have subsidized these reactors through a $970 million low interest loan to Ontario Power Generation, more than $100 million in grants to private companies and public utilities in Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and millions more to research fuelling requirements for small reactors at Chalk River.
Civil society groups are demanding accountability for these costly nuclear developments. Without full transparency, taxpayers and ratepayers will be forced to subsidize these experimental reactor projects and pass on an unwanted economic debt legacy to our children and grandchildren, along with the radioactive waste legacy that all nuclear reactors are adding to every day.
Quotes:
Michael Poellet, President, Inter-Church Uranium Committee Educational Cooperative:
“Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) were meant to remedy the grossly excessive, over-budget costs of nuclear power generation. With the price of renewables dropping precipitously the economics of SMRs has only worsened. The cancellation of the NuScale project with its utility partner Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems demonstrates that commercial electrical generation with SMRs is not economically viable. Canadian federal and provincial governments must allow the economic realities to break the spell that enchantment with SMRs has over them.”
rix ?
Media release from CRED-NB and collaborators. Le français suit…
The sudden cancellation last week of the first small nuclear reactor project in the United States, the NuScale project, calls into question the economic viability of Canada’s plans to develop and deploy small modular reactors.
Potential customers in Utah balked at the soaring projections for the cost of electricity the NuScale reactor would generate, and the project was unable to recruit other customers to buy its power.
Today, in response, civil society groups across Canada are demanding transparency and accountability for the costs of other small nuclear reactor designs planned in this country.
“Canada should stop writing blank cheques to nuclear promoters who cannot deliver on their promises of cheap, reliable electricity,” said Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.
Transparency requirements in the U.S. forced NuScale proponents to disclose the projected costs of electricity to potential investors on a regular basis. This is not the case in Canada.
Earlier this year, the target price for electricity from the NuScale project rose by over 50 percent to $89 US per MWh ($122.99 Canadian) with indications that future increases would be forthcoming. Investor confidence was shaken, and the project was scrapped.
The NuScale reactor design has been in development for more than 15 years and the company’s first commercial joint venture with electrical utilities in Utah was launched in 2015.
Governments in New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta have committed to building small reactors, while the Quebec government is conducting feasibility studies.
However, none of the Canadian nuclear proponents have laid out the projected costs of electricity production. In New Brunswick, the government has changed legislationto force the electricity utility to purchase power from new nuclear reactors even when it is not the lowest cost option.
Three years ago, more than 140 civil society groups across Canada signed a statement calling the proposed new reactors a “dirty, dangerous distraction,” from real climate action.
Nuclear critics have consistently said these new reactor designs will take too long to develop, and will cost too much compared with existing proven renewable energy option, to deal effectively with the climate crisis that requires immediate action.
To date, federal and provincial taxpayers have subsidized these reactors through a $970 million low interest loan to Ontario Power Generation, more than $100 million in grants to private companies and public utilities in Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and millions more to research fuelling requirements for small reactors at Chalk River.
Civil society groups are demanding accountability for these costly nuclear developments. Without full transparency, taxpayers and ratepayers will be forced to subsidize these experimental reactor projects and pass on an unwanted economic debt legacy to our children and grandchildren, along with the radioactive waste legacy that all nuclear reactors are adding to every day.
Quotes:
Michael Poellet, President, Inter-Church Uranium Committee Educational Cooperative:
“Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) were meant to remedy the grossly excessive, over-budget costs of nuclear power generation. With the price of renewables dropping precipitously the economics of SMRs has only worsened. The cancellation of the NuScale project with its utility partner Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems demonstrates that commercial electrical generation with SMRs is not economically viable. Canadian federal and provincial governments must allow the economic realities to break the spell that enchantment with SMRs has over them.”
David Geary, Writer and Researcher, Clean Green Saskatchewan:
“Our group, Clean Green Saskatchewan, was always confident that NuScale and all other SMR startup enterprises, GE-Hitachi included [a new reactor design selected for Ontario and Saskatchewan], would fail because of the ‘bottom line’ … i.e., the economics, the ‘financials’. They simply cannot compete in the energy marketplace…compared to any other electrical energy producing technology.”
Jack Gibbons, Chair, Ontario Clean Air Alliance
“The failure of the most advanced small nuclear project in the U.S. to come even remotely close to being financially viable should be a wake-up call for politicians in Canada dreaming about castles in the sky. Counting on unproven new nuclear technology to provide low-cost power is like counting on snow in July. It is time for Premier Ford to follow Hydro Quebec’s example and develop a financially prudent plan to meet all of Ontario’s future electricity needs by investing in energy efficiency, renewables and storage. It doesn’t make sense to waste public money on high-cost, high-risk nuclear projects when we have much cleaner, safer and lower cost options to keep our lights on.”
Susan O’Donnell, Spokesperson, Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick
“Our provincial government is backing two nuclear start-ups and their experimental small reactor designs. These two designs are based on earlier reactors that never operated successfully commercially despite billions of dollars in public subsidies in other countries. We believe that despite the tens of millions of public dollars given to the start-ups so far, their costly boondoggles will never be built. In effect, our government is kicking the can down the road, delaying real climate action by betting on unicorns and fairy dust.”
Gordon Edwards, President, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
“Public utilities are owned by the government. People elect the government. So every citizen is a shareholder in the utility company and deserves to be kept informed of all business decisions that they will ultimately have to pay for. In the midst of a climate crisis and crippling inflation, Spending Money Recklessly (SMR) is a terrible strategy. We should not delay climate action by wasting our time, our money, and our political will on speculative reactors that are all ‘first-of-a-kind’ experiments.”
Jean-Pierre Finet, Porte-parole, Regroupement des organismes environnementaux en énergie
“There is no social acceptability for nuclear energy in Quebec. Small modular reactors are not only costly, they take away government funding that would be better used on proven technologies such as heat pumps and heat storage. It is time that the Canadian government comes clean about the cost of this pseudo clean energy.”
